Muddied Embers
by Marshstone
Summary: Mako and Korra's daughter learns of prejudice against mixed benders, and slowly but surely, the knowledge she can never fit in begins to destroy her. When you're three out of four nations, nothing you ever do can be right for all of them, and to be any kind of bender only complicates the issue. Makorra, rated for safety. Family and prejudice centered fic.
1. 5

In Republic City, people who are one thing are as common as people who are a little bit of everything, but that doesn't mean people accept it. It doesn't mean that they'll let such things go unremarked upon. This is how she comes to know herself as more than the daughter of the Avatar – or more accurately, as less.

She is five and like all five year olds is interested in the world around her. She slips away from the White Lotus Sentry that her mother sends with her when groceries are shopped for. It's not intentional, this time; she is memorized by the complex patterns of the shoes in front of her. They're made by Fire Nation mountain people, the Altai, they're called, and they have points and rows of ridges pressed into the horse-bison leather, the colorful patterns carefully planned chaos, orange-red with gold and cyan trim on a black base, silver with black flames tipped in pink, not beaded like moccasins from her grandmother but painted on. It's just one vendor in the sea of hundreds, but it stops her in her tracks, and she traces over the patterns with the tip of her index finger. Altai people are mysterious, with their strange dialects and odd clothes, and she decides she likes them.

"You like?" asks the Fire Nation man, the Altai vendor with his hair in a long low braid and his light mountain-people skin. He has serious brown eyes, but a nice smile that grows when she nods enthusiastically. "You would like a pair. Good for earthbending," he assures her, glancing at her green eyes.

"I don't know what I can bend yet," she huffs, face falling. The man is in his forties, so it surprises her when he kneels down beside her, away from the crowds for a moment.

"Just be a good person. Bending changes. That does not." He smiles when she nods uncertainly. He stands, looking satisfied. "My parents were both good, strong firebenders. But I, I am gifted at this instead. I call it shoebending."

That gets a laugh out of her, and for a few more moments everything is right with the world.

She resumes looking over pairs, each one intricately made, fur lined, stiff and meant to brave hard weather. A thought occurs to her, that the Fire Nation's mountain people and her grandmother's people must go through the same ice and rocks in the winter. They have different way of decorating, but they're so similar that she ends up spending all her allotted money on a pair of boots. Were that this was a better world, that would be what she took away from it, that there was great beauty in the other nations and people were good people. She tucks her old shoes into her bag and wears the boots even though they're a little too big and it's summer and her feet sweat in them. They're red with gold and black bands at the top, little carefully done yellow embers falling down the sides.

Now she just has to find the White Lotus Sentry. She's not in a panic yet, because she knows he's always here, in the market place, if he loses her. All she has to do is walk and she'll find him. She tucks her trousers into the boots, not noticing at first the snickers of her in her mismatched outfit of Water Tribe tunic, plain pants and Fire Nation boots, but then an older girl, nine or eight, points to her and laughs. She has on pretty Fire Nation clothes, layered against the heat, and so do her friends. They must go to a private school. The Avatar's little daughter pauses to stare at them, then goes over to them, not mad, just confused. She's still innocent, but she's not going to be for long in Republic City.

"What're you laughing at?" she asks, sending them into a tizzy. They all have black hair like her father, put into trendy haircuts, and their eyes are browns and golds. They are four perfect purebred people, and to them she isn't the Avatar's daughter, she's a mutt.

"You," the tallest one, the girl with porcelain pale skin, says with an air of superiority. "You look so stupid, acting like you're one of us."

"My dad's Fire Nation," she replies as a defense, but her stomach is churning unpleasantly as their laughter increases, the way they're looking down at her making her feel foolish. She's hot in the face, and not just from the summer sun up above. "No, really, he is."

"You look like mud," another girl says loudly, getting a passing grown up to chuckle. "If you're really half and half you shouldn't look like mud with leaves in it."

Her hand comes up to her eyes, questioning. "My eyes? You mean there's something wrong with my eyes? But my Uncle has eyes like this."

"There's something wrong with all of you, then," the pale girl sighs, and it's like a knife through the chest. "Not just your eyes. You're a muddy mess. No wonder you're out here by yourself. I certainly wouldn't want you around."

"An Thi, that's going too far," a girl in the back tries to say, but she's ignored.

"Get out of here, mud. We're all clean here," An Thi dismisses her with a shove, and she stumbles in a daze away from the girls.

Eventually the White Lotus Sentry finds her down in the lower end of market stalls, staring into her own reflection. There's the mud-colored skin she'd been mocked for, the dull forest green eyes she'd heard called her leafs. Her hair was dark as her father's, black as a raven-hawk's wing. Her face was heart shaped, with ears others might see as large but were normal for the Water Tribe. These details all made her ugly, made her insides twist, and though she refused to elaborate on what she bought, the bag tied tightly shut, she glanced down at her soft moccasins every other step on the way home. When other people laughed, her gaze dropped to the ground or to the nearest reflective surface, to a reflection she had only begun to dislike.

By the time she was full grown, she would learn to truly hate it.


	2. 6

She is six when she tries to play with the other kids at school for the first time.

She has been sent to a little, private academy, a place to learn from the best away from the prying eyes of the media and people who would only see her as the Avatar's daughter. Mommy and Daddy were very firm about wanting her to be happy. So while she isn't totally happy with the idea of leaving her parents for several hours a day, she goes, her hair put in two thick braids in the front that are then looped through the top of the braid with buffalo-yak string tying them together. The string is strong and holds no matter how she moves, and she runs to catch up with her father as they walk together the first day.

He is a happy parent, a good dad who loves his little girl very much. He does things for her when no one's looking, buys her sweet dumplings and candied nuts and little things he wanted but never got as a kid. He is stern, but he is her world along with her mother. The marketplace is not forgotten, it is simply avoided. Her boots were shoved into the closet long ago and ignored; she has outgrown them.

When she gets to class she says hi to her classmates, who are as varied as the colors of the world. They are every nationality, even Air as Pema's youngest son, Amzin, is attending. He is a quiet, fidgety boy with gray eyes and a mess of dark hair he refuses to have shaved off; his parents permit it because it causes him such distress and hope he'll grow out of it. There are many nonbenders present, as schools are integrated, but she can't tell one group from another. There are fellow Water Tribe girls and some boys in nice traditional navy blues and Earth Kingdom ones in their browns and greens, with just as many Fire Nation ones who stand clumped together, talking and excited.

There are others there that raise her spirits. There is a solemn looking girl with brown Water Tribe skin and bright golden eyes, a grumpy boy with auburn hair and blue eyes, an excitable girl with her black Fire Nation hair in a Water Tribe loops despite her brown eyes, and a cheerful boy with green eyes, light skin and wavy brown hair the texture of a Water Tribe member.

She does not understand why the groups have separated to chat before class. But she will learn.

She goes over to the Water Tribe group, smiling. "Hi! I'm Kyoda. What're your names?"

The first girl, one with her hair put into two simple braids, responds kindly enough. "I'm Ivalu, and the boy with the warrior's wolf tail is Kalleq, and the short girl is Neqi. And-"

"And I'm Timmiaq, and you're mud."

The words are a slap. But she maintains a nervous smile. "Let's play Pai Sho before class starts. That's always fun."

Ivalu smiles, and so does Kalleq. Kalleq pipes up, "I'm really good at Pai Sho! I'll be the best in class."

"Nonbenders need _something_ to cling to," Timmiaq murmurs, causing Kalleq's smile to evaporate. "What about you, Kyoda? Can you bend?"

"Not yet," she admits, and he snorts derisively.

"Then go away. Ivalu and I are going to show Kalleq how to bend and maybe he'll learn how. You're more suited to earthbending, kid." He gets some chuckles from around the room, but when she turns no one is chuckling.

So she goes over to the earthbenders, smile strained. "I'm Kyoda. Who are all of you?"

"Noakki," one boy introduces himself as. "Ignore Timmiaq, he's a bending purist. Says he'll be the reverse of Amon one day. We don't care if you're a nonbender. But my dad says it's bad to hang out with the wrong crowd, so go away."

She frowns. "My Mom's the Avatar. She's not the 'wrong crowd'."

"But you're not your mother, are you?" It stings, and she bows her head as the teacher comes in.

She tries to find a seat up front, but they're taken up by mostly earthbenders, and the one seat that isn't taken, a boy reaches out to block her from so Kalleq can sit there instead. Though one earthbending boy looks at her apologetically, he doesn't object, and she ends up in the middle surrounded by firebenders and waterbenders, both of whom ignore her when she drops her pencil or asks them to pass her a book, and who don't play with her when they break for lunch and play.

The mixed group is afraid of her because she's the Avatar's daughter and they say they don't want to get in trouble by talking to her. She ends up with Ivalu, a nice earthbender boy named Juron, and Amzin. They all act polite and nice to her, but she can't bring herself to finish her lunch or go play games with the others, even as they laugh and shriek and bits of earth, fire and water fly about. She watches with an empty feeling in her stomach and dumps her lunch into a trash bin by the door, heading in rather than watching the other kids play.

Somehow, there's no appeal to it anymore.


	3. 9

**Author's Note:** I would like to thank all the people who have put this on their alerts and favorites. I appreciate the support for this odd idea of a story. I greatly thank those that have reviewed for their diligence. I apologize for the lack of updates, as I've just started school and that's always a bit of a rough time. I hope to update more often in the future and I thank everyone for their patience and continual support.

* * *

Korra thinks she understands her daughter's problems with spirituality.

She understands that about as much as Pema understands her son Amzin.

They are both growing quieter as time goes on, and although their shared disdain of the spiritual world should bring them problems with their parents, Kyoda thinks she has it worse, because her parents are supportive, and that's a lot harder to deal with because it means they haven't tried to force it on her. They think that she's fine without it.

They don't understand that she fears spirituality.

She fears bending. She doesn't want to be a bender, and if it's a spiritual thing, then spirits and tales of them are to be avoided. She doesn't want to make the earth tremble or make tsunamis out of the gutter or set the air ablaze. She doesn't want to be an earthbender with Water Tribe skin or a waterbender with earthbender eyes and firebender's hair or a firebender with the wrong everything but her hair. She will not be a mismatched puzzle piece in the world. She will be a plain nonbender and move away one day, to some tiny village where no one knows her and she can make a living quietly away from the noise and judgmental stares.

Until then she fears the spirit world and awakes screaming every time her dreams seem to have any spirit, any past Avatar with kind eyes full of sorrow for her. She withdraws from them as if they're monsters and more often than not her mother comes to attend to her. Korra is a fierce warrior of a mother and yells at the spirits her blue eyes track through the room, until they are gone and her daughter is safely held tight in muscular arms. Korra thinks they are spirits coming in guises of human spirits. She does not understand that they're truly coming to try to help Kyoda, and she keeps them at bay as best she can, but spirituality was never her strong point, either.

When Kyoda is better at sneaking by the White Lotus Sentries, she sneaks out to where Amzin is. He is like her brother, and they share a roof on Air Temple Island, so she feels no shame or hesitance in hiding from the spirits and her mother there. Her mother does not understand and it hurts Kyoda; how can she tell her parents she doesn't want to be a bender? When her mother bends all four elements and her father and uncle bend fire and earth, her grandmother Senna a fine waterbender, how can Kyoda even _think_ she doesn't want to bend? Something is horribly wrong with her and she cries many tears over it, drinking teas that Amzin custom blends, as they stay awake long into the night and early hours of the morning, together in how alone they are. He has the opposite problem, seeing his mother's exhaustion at putting up with another bender of a child, but he listens like no one else. He understands living under a legacy.

The kids at school don't. She has friends, of course, but they don't know what it's like to be so wary of the world at the age of eight. She can't properly explain it either, so she shares it only with Amzin, bit by bit, day by day. Older kids make kissy faces at the two, but Kyoda still thinks kissing is gross and Amzin just rolls his eyes. They are unnaturally serious as a natural result of how they've been raised. At least by the time her ninth birthday rolls around her father has quit trying to get her to bend through hands-on training.

Until then he takes her out to the gym above the pro-bending arena and tries things. He thinks she's unhappy because she can't bend. And like finding a job or fighting the Equalists, Mako approaches things practically. He finds solutions. It's what he does. When it's for someone he loves, he can even lightningbend under the duress of being bloodbended; he is the kind of father who will make life better because he feels it's just how he works. So their trips to the gym ensue after he's off work, and he and some old pro-bending buddies show her all kinds of techniques and positions and work with her. She is terrified to find that something within her stirs at these sessions, but she fights it down. Like forcing down unpleasant tea, she shoves it away and nothing moves, nothing burns, nothing so much as sways. Mako keeps trying until she breaks down in tears one day, envisioning a future where this is her life and she has to fight this feeling every day.

He thinks she's crying because he's pushed her too far. He regrets it, and stops. It's the best ninth birthday present she's gotten next to a vest from Amzin that makes her eyes look blue. It's still not enough to make her normal, but two instead of three is better accepted, and she hugs him. That night she dreams she runs from the spirits who visit her as fast as she can, through a forest thick with fog, until her legs give out and she must claw and crawl every inch further, which she does until she wakes.

The spirits visit her no more after that.


End file.
